Kaffir Boy Hate Quotes

How we cite our quotes: Citations follow this format: (Chapter.Paragraph)

Quote #1

The other policeman meantime was still at the doorjamb, reveling at the sight of my father being humiliated. The emotional and physical nakedness of my father somehow made me see him in a different light – he seemed a stranger, a total alien. Watching him made tears surge to my eyes, but I fought desperately to keep them from flowing. I cannot cry, I told myself, I would not cry, I should not cry in front of these black beasts. For the first time in my life I felt hate and anger rage with furious intensity inside me. What I felt was no ordinary hate or anger; it was something much deeper, much darker, frightening, something even I couldn't understand. As I stood there watching, I could feel that hate and anger being branded into my five-year-old mind, branded to remain until I die. (3.82)

Mark's first brush with the police teaches him what it means to be hated and to hate. It will affect him the rest of his life.

Quote #2

He tore me away from my mother and lashed me. She tried to intervene, but my father shoved her aside and promised her the same. I never finished my meal; sobbing, I slunk off to bed, my limbs afire with pain where the rawhide had raised welts. The next day, as I nursed my wounds, while my father was at work, I told my mother that I hated him and promised her I would kill him when I grew up. (5.13)

Trying to teach Mark to abide by Venda traditions and rules, Papa only succeeds in teaching Mark to hate and fear him.

Quote #3

But things didn't get better. If they did, I didn't notice it. Gradually, I came to accept hunger as a constant companion. But this new hunger was different. It filled me with hatred, confusion, helplessness, hopelessness, anxiety, loneliness, selfishness and a cynical attitude toward people. It seemed to lurk everywhere about and inside me: in the things I touched, in the people I talked to, in the empty pots, in the black children I played with, in the nightmares I dreamt. It even pervaded the air I breathed. At times it was the silent destroyer, creeping in unseen, unrecognized, except when, like a powerful time bomb, it would explode inside my guts. At other times it took the form of a dark, fanged beast, and hovered constantly over my dizzy head, as if about to pounce on me and gouge my guts out with its monstrous talons. (10.58)

Hunger produces hate and anger. The physical has severe ramifications on the emotional.